The secondary server in this computer room is having problems with its disk drives. Fortunately, there's a simple short-term fix: Reseat the drives. Then they'll last awhile and eventually fail again.

Phone company tech shows up at this business to install two new high-availability routers. But the router they're replacing will remain in place for 60 days -- just in case anything goes wrong.

Pilot fish works the late shift, so he's not due into the office until 10 a.m. But at 8:45 a.m., he gets a phone call from a colleague saying the server is dead.

This pilot fish writes custom software for his company and supports its users at remote sites. So when a customer contacts him to say the software has suddenly stopped working and is returning an error message, fish is right on it.

High-strung user calls help desk because her company-issued laptop can't connect through the firewall from home -- and nothing this pilot fish suggests seems to help.

Reseller's team has just installed a new mainframe for this client, and the senior systems tech is justly proud that the job is almost done. But he has one more point to make.

IT site manager pilot fish at this big manufacturer gets a call from an engineer -- who's frantic because his plotter won't print some engineering drawings he needs pronto.

IT help desk is informed by purchasing managers that IT will be supporting a new expense-reporting process to "increase efficiency and drive costs down." Yes, it's as bad as it sounds.

User calls the help desk to complain that her screenshots are not showing up in the documents she's creating, and nothing the support tech suggests seems to help at all -- until the tech asks one question.

This user is working late at a medical clinic when her printer jams. But instead of calling technical support, she decides she can fix it herself -- though that turns out to be a challenge.

This hosting provider recently got a new customer for its managed e-mail service -- and apparently the customer really needs to be managed.

This specialty hardware company has a store about 60 miles from headquarters, with a PC that connects to the corporate mainframe across the Internet -- and one employee who's gullible and a bit dense.

This IT pilot fish heads a group responsible for backing up a large pool of servers with a huge amount of data. Then they're asked to help another group with its backup problem -- and a problem it is.

At an IT staff meeting, the software developers aren't happy — they're catching flak because a slow network makes their apps run at glacial speed. But one tech knows why.

This pilot fish is doing support work for a local school where the children are having trouble getting their computers to respond to the mice -- and nothing seems to help....